Just because they ask, doesn’t mean we have to give it to them

Governments here in Illinois (and probably everywhere else) like to “request” things, but that doesn’t mean we mundanes always need to grant these requests.  Two examples from recent experience:

detail from work of Chris Karr via flickr (cc)
detail from a photo by Chris Karr via flickr (cc)

Saving money: Illinois Secretary of State Certificate of Good Standing.  Our high-tech sophisticated Secretary of State makes it easy, relatively, to get the “certificate of good standing” that organizations may require, for example, to set up some kinds of financial accounts.  No problem, just go to Jesse White’s web site, do a search (which really works, in my experience), fill out the simple form and authorize a credit card charge of $16 ($5 transaction fee, $1 payment processor fee, and $10 expedited fee).  But suppose you aren’t in a great hurry and don’t need (or want to pay for) expediting.  Or suppose you lack a credit card but have a checking account (or can buy a money order). What to do?

Nowhere could I find the answer on Jesse’s web site.  Fortunately, cheapness wonk Adam Kerman of the Transit Riders’ Authority knew what to do:

Write a letter to request the Certificate of Good Standing. Make sure to include the corporate file number and your contact phone number. $5 fee Secretary of State Business Services 501 S. Second St., Rm. 330 Springfield, IL 62756

And that’s just what I did.  A week or so later, the certificate arrived.

Current RTA Executive Director

Saving Dignity: Regional Transportation Authority old person discount fare card. A good and privacy-minded friend of mine, having recently attained the age of 65, wanted to take advantage of the “reduced fares” available to old people (among others) on RTA-funded transit systems. First thing she found out was that it takes 3-4 weeks to get the required farecard, so she should have applied 21 days prior to her birthday.  Too late for that, but she readily found the necessary form, which turns out to serve two functions: (a) apply for reduced fares based on age or other criteria; (b) apply for free fares based on likelihood of voting Democratic documented low income.  Being successful enough not to qualify for (b), she still had to complete a form with a blank for “Social Security Number.”  What do to?

She wrote “NOT REQUIRED” in the SSN blank, and 23 days later received a reduced fare card in the mail.  Moral of this story: You can surrender somewhat less privacy than the authorities ask for, without giving up rights or privileges, at least in this case.

Innovators’ Patent Agreement

Twitter says it plans for its future patents to be subject to an “Innovator’s Patent Agreement,” which will prevent them from being used “to impede the innovation of others.” Seems like a good thing, but it’s still very much a proposal, with the latest draft apparently here.  Like Google’s “don’t be evil,” I suspect there will end up being some flexibility as to what is “defensive” and what actually “impedes innovation.”

(via Barry Rithotlz)

The difference between money and wealth/services

 

image credit: taken in 1990 by John Foss via Wikimedia (cc)

This article from the Guardian illustrates nicely the difference between what we want– goods (“wealth” in terms of political economy) and services– vs. money.  Money is a medium of exchange, which we can use to obtain wealth and services, but in itself it really isn’t capable of satisfying our desires. The particular example here is from the town of Volos, whose railway station is pictured.

I could imagine Greece not formally dropping the Euro, but just kind of abandoning it, using local currencies, perhaps eventually united into a new Drachma. It’s not clear from the article whether their government is attempting to tax the alternative-currency transactions.  The wiser course would be to tax economic rents instead of transactions, and that could be done in whichever currency is most practical.

Bast drafts Henry George for Green Bay

image credit: freedigitalphotos.net
image credit: freedigitalphotos.net

Longtime HGS  supporter Joseph Bast, head of the Heartland Institute, has a new policy brief (pdf), with a podcast overview, recommending that fans of professional “sports” own the teams thru nonprofit corporations.  The only actual example of this is the Green Bay Packers, which originated as a for-profit organization but was bought out of bankruptcy by a fan-organized nonprofit.  They would never leave Green Bay since the owners cannot profit by moving them. Thus the main lever used by for-profit teams to extort new stadiums and other favors would be broken.

Pointing out that teams currently extract monopoly rents from the community, Bast mentions Henry George but rejects George’s idea that natural monopolies should be municipally-owned.  Of course, George never applied this concept to professional “sports,” which existed in his day but was nothing like what we see now. The closest I can think of is that George considered the idea of a publicly-subsidized theater to be so absurd, that he compared it to subsidy of various other industries to illustrate the absurdity of the latter.

So why don’t fans establish nonprofit teams?  My personal theory is that most fans of professional “sports” are masochists and like to be abused.  But perhaps I’m wrong.  Bast suggests routes around other barriers including opposition of major leagues, high cost of setting up a team, and existing taxpayer-subsidized facilities which are controlled by existing monopolies.

Securitizing the banksters, with cameras and contracts

Image credit: J D Abolins via Flickr (cc)Just in case there was any doubt, Pam Martens in Counterpunch gives us a report on the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center, where feeds from sophisticated spy cameras are integrated to essentially track anyone and everyone on the streets who might interest our supervisors. What’s news here, tho I suppose I already suspected it, is that partners in this operation are not just the NYPD, but also “the same firms under investigation in 50 states for mortgage and foreclosure fraud and widely credited with causing the Nation’s economic collapse.”  Presumably they have added some of the proceeds of their crimes to the $150 million public money that’s been used for this project.
It’s difficult to believe that Chicago doesn’t have something similar.
Meanwhile, and I suppose it’s more relevant to us here, the CTA will be paying up to $58,000/month, plus commission, to Goldman Sachs and other “financial advisors.” The Authority assures us such amounts “are comparatively very small compared to the billions of dollars in much-needed funding CTA would secure” if such commissions are paid. “Funding” more likely means “loans” or “new ways of packaging existing streams of money” rather than any actual additional resources or capture of land value which transit could create.

Gold vs. “real money”

Gold Mine
image credit: Kake Pugh via flickr (cc)

The basic function of money is as a medium of exchange.  Inevitably, a secondary function arises as a measure of value. Money can be paper, precious metals, shells, whatever people in a particular time and place use as a medium of exchange.  There’s no reason that it would need to have “intrinsic” value. If  people use U S currency to buy and sell, then it is “real money.”

So is gold “real money?” I don’t think so. Just about nobody uses it as a medium of exchange. Historically, gold coins have sometimes been used but for ordinary people silver, copper, or base metal fiat-type money would be much more common.

Certainly fiat money can depreciate, usually does, and for us in the U S that has been and will almost certainly continue to be the trend.  And gold might be a good investment, in the sense that it will be exhangeable in the future for more real wealth than it is now, or at least more in comparison to other kinds of investments available to ordinary people. Of course, gold can depreciate too, if large new deposits are discovered or folks decide they really don’t want gold after all.  Which isn’t to say that either of these things will happen any time soon.

Anyone who wishes to resurrect the “gold standard” might want to read the late Peter Bernstein’s “Power of Gold,” or some other history books. Somehow we end up electing people who don’t put a high priority on keeping the dollar strong (or at least, not too much weaker).  If that’s a problem, then maybe we should be electing other people, or finding ways to reduce the power of those who purchase elections. Making the U S dollar convertible into a fixed amount of gold is not going to bring prosperity, or even prevent further disruption. There are plenty of examples of economic collapse under a gold standard.

It might, however, benefit those who own gold, or gold mining stocks.

Somebody please disagree with me, or I will assume all of the above to be true.

Taiwan monitors land value

Shin Kong Life Tower
photo of Shin Kong Life Tower from Wikimedia

Much like Korea, Japan, and other advanced countries, Taiwan has a land value tax which requires it to monitor land value regularly.  And they do, apparently pretty well, as indicated by this report that 2011 land values average 8.65% over the previous year. The land value tax could be one of the reasons Taiwan seems to be more prosperous than most countries, but that isn’t my point.

My point is that assessing land value is not exceedingly difficult, if one has competent and reasonably honest assessors.  The most valuable land in Taiwan is reportedly under the Shin Kong Life Tower, NT$1.21 million per square meter (about $4,000 per square foot, a figure probably never seen in Chicago).

Thanks to the Facebook LVT group for the link.

Let’s treat corporations like people

credit: Berkeley T. Compton via Flickr (cc)

Lots of folks seem upset that corporations are being treated like people. True, America prospered for centuries with tight limits on corporate powers (fine history here), and it might be a good idea to again restrict the privilege of forming and maintaining corporations.  Or maybe to do away with them altogether.

But if, instead, corporations are going to have the same powers as natural persons, let’s go about this systematically.

A corporation can deduct all its expenses before calculating its taxable income.  A natural person should be allowed to do the same, deducting the cost of food, housing, medical treatments, transportation, and everything else.  If the result is a net loss, carry it over to the next year.

A person doesn’t get full legal rights until the age of 18 (or for some rights, 21). Until then, the parents are responsible for most kinds of damage which the person might do. So if a corporation is formed today, the stockholders should for 18 or 21 years be liable for the corporation’s debts and damages. The stockholders would also be responsible for making sure that the corporation is properly cared for and educated.  In serious cases of irresponsible stockholders, the State Department of Children, Family, And Infant Corporation Services would come in and take the corporation away.

How about voting? Should a corporation, having reached the age of majority, be permitted to cast a vote? I’m not sure about this. Under “one corporation one vote” the megacorporations really wouldn’t be very influential. But wealthy people might choose to form many small corporations in order to influence elections. And of course if they can vote, wouldn’t corporations have to be permitted to hold office? Voting is definitely a concern, but since the rich and their corporations control major elections now, I doubt any choice in this matter would make things appreciably worse.

 

Another successful politician endorses land value tax

Nick Boles
image from Financial Times

Nick Boles

MP for Grantham and Stamford. New-intake MP and a key moderniser. Former Policy Exchange director and one of the Notting Hill set. Deemed close to the leadership. Tipped for bigger things

I assume this means he’s successful, British political terminology being rather unfamiliar to me. What’s really important is that

Nick Boles, The MP for Grantham and Stamford says a Land Value Tax should be introduced and use the proceeds to cut National Insurance – permanently.

He doesn’t want to do it exactly how I would want to do it, because he seems to want to exclude owner-occupied residential land and farmland, without limitation.  But the important thing is, he’s a successful politician, he gets elected, and he appears to want to move toward a sound economy. I’m just some guy with a blog.

I also don’t know how all this relates to the British custom of building homes on rented land far more commonly than Americans do. But it seems to be his top priority.

Source: FT via GN

Cuba gets it half-wrong

What kind of financial crisis could America have had without private collection of land rent?  If homebuyers were able to purchase a house, but the land came practically free with an obligation to pay a land value tax, how bad could the mortgage mess have been?  Not very bad, evidently, since mortgages would have been much smaller and quite unlikely to go under water (because the price of houses can’t decline nearly as much as that of the land under them).

Veranda in CubaWhich is why I’m not pleased to learn that Cuba will allow the private purchase and sale of homes (including, apparently, both structure and land).  There will be limits (only Cuban citizens and permanent residents, and only two homes per person) “to prevent speculative buying and the accumulation of large real estate holdings,” tho one wonders how long-lived and how effective they’ll be.

There’s no question that Cuba’s struggling economy needs freer trade, and moves to allow buying and selling of cars, and an increase in the permitted size of private businesses, tend in that direction.   It’s unfortunate that the Cuban powers that be don’t seem to recognize that land is different, since by definition it will never be produced no matter how free or prosperous the economy.

“The new law requires that all real estate transactions be made through Cuban bank accounts so that they can be better regulated, and it sets a tax rate of 8 per cent of the assessed value.”  The need for more government revenue is one possible explanation for this change.  Another is that Cuban elites anticipate, after further easing of land ownership restrictions, the ability to accumulate at low prices sites which will become valuable in the future.  The least likely is that Cuban authorities just haven’t thought about what land is and its role in political economy.